Where Saturn gets its rings....

https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net...48&oe=57DCD7A6

Here are some pretty gross things space does to your body

Space may seem the most awesome and beautiful travel destination, but being an astronaut is something only a few will ever get to experience. But although being an astronaut may seem as the coolest job ever, it is far from glamourous. Because being in space can take a huge toll on your body, and some of it is just really gross

Here are some fascinating but gross things that can happen to your body when you’re floating around in space:

Dead skin cells fall off in huge chunks

When in you’re living in the International Space Station for two to three months all the callouses on the bottom of your feet are starting to fall off. This is due to the fact that astronauts spend most of their time floating around instead of walking. Pretty gross right?!

Your face will get puffy and you will get skinny legs

Due to gravity the fluids in our body are not evenly distributed, but in in space this changes radically. Thanks to microgravity all the body fluids will get evenly redistributed and therefore our legs appear skinnier and faces puffier.

Space sickness instead of sea sickness

During the first days in space most of the astronauts experience some sort of space sickness. It feels like having a huge hangover, but then combined with motion sickness and an inability to locate your limbs. This is all due to the fact that microgravity throws off your sense of direction. So in a certain way you can compare it with being sea sick.

http://www.sciencedump.com/sites/def...?itok=cnNL5N_l

So as you can see being in space isn’t all fun and games!

Not exactly 'cutting edge' science, but a very satisfying meditation on how and why we came to know so much about the universe

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Check out his channel, other videos available.

That was pretty cool.

Very cool...

The outermost ring anyway.

I'd like to see a snake in 0 G

Snakes on a Space Station

Starring Samuel L. Jackson?

Rep applied...

Tee'd that one up. Lol.

So... King Tut. He actually had a space knife. How cool is that?

King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms

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A famous dagger found in the wrapping of Egyptian King Tutankhamun's mummy was made with iron from a meteorite, a study confirms.

An analysis of the dagger's blade led by Daniela Comelli, a professor of materials science at the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy, showed that it contains 10 per cent nickel and 0.6 per cent cobalt, the researchers report in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

The analysis was conducted using a technique called X-ray fluorescence, which identifies different elements from the characteristic colours of X-ray light they give off when hit with higher-energy X-rays. Then they compared the composition of the dagger's blade with that of 11 metallic meteorites and found it to be very similar.

The dagger was found by archeologist Howard Carter in 1925, three years after he discovered King Tut's tomb. The dagger was in the wrapping surrounding the right thigh of the boy king's mummy. It had a decorated gold handle with a pommel of rock crystal, and the iron blade was protected with a gold sheath decorated with a pattern of lilies on one side, feathers on the other, and a jackal's head, the researchers reported.

The dagger dates back to the 14th century BC and is one of very few iron artifacts ever found from the ancient Egyptian culture, which isn't thought to have developed iron smelting until the 8th century BC — later than neighbouring countries, Comelli told CBC News in an email.

'High manufacturing quality'

"The problem with iron working is related to its high melting point (1,538 C). Because of it, early smiths couldn't heat ore enough to extract iron and couldn't forge the iron into weapons," she wrote.

Earlier iron objects were typically ornamental or ceremonial and made of meteoritic iron that was considered more valuable than gold, the researchers wrote.

It was shaped by hammering, Comelli said. King Tut's dagger had been suspected to have been made with that type of iron, but it had not been confirmed.

"In this context, the high manufacturing quality of Tutankhamun's dagger blade is evidence of early successful iron smithing in the 14th C. BCE," the researchers wrote in their paper.

They added that the finding also provides insight into Egyptian descriptions of iron that appeared around 100 years later, which use the term "iron of the sky."

"The introduction of the new composite term suggests that the ancient Egyptians … were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky already in the 13th C. BCE," the authors wrote.

Take this with a YUGE grain of salt. The science is really interesting, but temper expectations...

Universal cancer vaccine on horizon after genetic breakthrough

A universal cancer vaccine is on the horizon after scientists discovered how to rewire immune cells to fight any type of disease.

The potential new therapy involves injecting tiny particles of genetic code into the body which travel to the immune cells and teach them to recognise specific cancers.

Although scientists have shown previously that is it is possible to engineer immune cells outside the body so they can spot cancer it is the first time it has happened inside cells.

And because the genetic code could be programmed for any cancer, it means the technique could be universal. All doctors would need is the genetic profile of the tumour to make a custom-made vaccine which as well as fighting the disease, would prevent it ever returning

Test in mice showed that the vaccine triggered a strong immune response while trials in three skin cancer patients demonstrated that the treatment could be tolerated.

“The vaccines are fast and inexpensive to produce, and virtually any tumour antigen can be encoded by RNA,” said lead author Prof Ugur Sahin, managing director of Translational Oncology at the University Medical Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany.

“The approach introduced here may be regarded as a universally applicable novel vaccine class for cancer immunotherapy.”

The team focussed on a class of immune cells call dendritic cells which are constantly on the look-out for foreign invaders in the body. Once a dendritic cell spots a rogue cell like cancer, it captures molecules from the surface and presents it to killer T-cells to instruct it to begin fighting the disease.

However cancer cells look very similar to normal cells and so the immune system often avoids them.

The new technology involves placing a small piece of genetic code in a nanoparticle and giving it a slightly negative charge so it is drawn to dendritic immune cells in the spleen, lymph nodes and bone marrow.

Once there it orders the creation of a cancer molecule – known as an antigen – which is then used as a biological mugshot so that immune cells know what to look out for.

The authors proved that it triggers a strong T-cell response and starts fighting tumours.

Dr Aine McCarthy, Cancer Research UK’s senior science information officer: “By combining laboratory-based studies with results from an early-phase clinical trial, this research shows that a new type of treatment vaccine could be used to treat patients with melanoma by boosting the effects of their immune systems.

“Because the vaccine was only tested in three patients, larger clinical trials are needed to confirm it works and is safe, while more research will determine if it could be used to treat other types of cancer.

The research was published in the journal Nature.

Response from fellow scientists on why you should be very skeptical but intrigued:

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/ex...ancer-vaccine/

**** you Ms. Fizzle...

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http://i66.tinypic.com/2mn3h1e.jpg

More awesome: https://www.instagram.com/bindox_85/

Speaking of, I know you read about that supposed super-bacteria that's completely resistant to antibiotics.

Talk to me Fish. Soothe my fears.

Yeah, it's been making the rounds. Mostly fear mongering...

No, this isn’t the start of the antibiotic apocalypse, just bad reporting
New drug-resistant infection is cause for measured concern, but let’s get the facts straight.

Over the next day or so, you may see headlines and reports about a “nightmare” “superbug” that has been detected for the first time in the US.

So far, the Washington Post reports:
“The superbug that doctors have been dreading just reached the U.S.”
And the article starts with: “For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort.”

CNN had a similarly alarming but distinct headline:
“'Nightmare' drug-resistant bacteria CRE found in U.S. woman”

And NBC News ran:
“'Nightmare Bacteria' Superbug Found for First Time in U.S”

There are some truths and cause for concern here, but a lot of errors and hype as well. Let’s sort it out.

Here’s what really happened

Researchers reported Thursday that a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman was found to be infected with an E. coli strain that’s resistant to the last-resort antibiotic colistin. Upon DNA analysis, researchers determined that the E. coli is resistant to colistin because it carries a colistin resistance gene called mcr-1 on a circular piece of DNA called a plasmid. The study appears in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

As Ars previously reported, mcr-1 was first discovered in bacteria late last year in China. The discovery of the gene quickly raised concern because of its placement on a plasmid, which bacteria can easily share with their neighbors. Colistin resistance had been reported before in other bacteria—including in bacteria found in the US—but their colistin resistance genes resided on bacterial chromosomes, which aren’t shareable. Experts feared that the new plasmid-based colistin resistance would easily spread among bacteria, potentially to ones that are already resistant to other last-resort antibiotics.

Since the initial report, mcr-1-toting bacteria have been discovered on every continent. And the infected PA woman, who was suffering from a urinary tract infection, had not traveled in the last five months.

But this may or may not be concerning. It’s important to note that we don’t know exactly how long mcr-1 has been hanging around in bacteria or where it first came from. It may have spread around the globe in months or been lying low and spreading quietly for years. Either way, it was inevitable and expected that mcr-1-carrying bacteria would pop up in the US. (Although, in weeks of testing other bacteria from the Pennsylvania clinic where the patient was identified, no other mcr-1-carrying bacteria have been found.)

While concerns still stand, the alarmist headlines are unnecessary—and so are the errors.

Here’s what you can ignore

First, the “first” bit. The first line of the Post’s article states: “For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort.”

Nope—this isn’t even close to true. This is absolutely not the first time a person in the US has been found with a bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic. There are several last-resort antibiotics, and many bacteria over the years have shown up with resistance to them—including colistin.

For instance, way back in 1991, a hospital in Brooklyn suffered an outbreak of bacteria resistant to vancomycin, a last-resort antibiotic. In 2009, several Detroit medical centers suffered an outbreak of bacteria that were resistant to both colistin and carbapenem—another last resort antibiotic. And not even the National Institutes of Health has been immune to bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotics. In 2011, an outbreak of carbapenem-resistant bacteria at the NIH’s clinic sickened 18, killing 11.

The only real first in this case is that it’s the first time mcr-1-based colistin resistance has shown up in a US patient.

While, again, this isn’t exactly good news, it’s not catastrophic. There are several last-resort antibiotics, and doctors can try different combinations and strengths of prescriptions before an infection may be deemed untreatable.

Next is the confusing CRE connection

The CNN headline, which has now been updated, initially incorrectly identified the colistin resistant bacteria as a CRE. Other articles have brought this term up as well.

CRE stands for carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. The Enterobacteriaceae are a big family of bacteria that include some harmless ones and some notable pathogenic ones, including Salmonella, E.coli, Klebsiella, and Shigella.

Carbapenem resistance is a big concern because it has been rising steadily in recent years, and CRE infections can lead to death 50 percent of the time. For this reason, CRE infections have been dubbed by some as “nightmare” cases.

However, the bacteria reported today is not a CRE. While it is an E. coli strain, it’s in the Enterobacteriaceae family and has a whopping 15 types of antibiotic resistance genes—genes for carbapenem resistance were not among them. There were several other antibiotics that the strain was still sensitive to as well.

Here's the quick take-away

Thursday’s report of a mcr-1-based colistin-resistant bacterial infection in a US patient is concerning, but unsurprising. The plasmid based resistant gene threatens to spread to other bacteria, potentially to ones that are already resistant to last resort drugs, such as CRE. However, the trajectory of mcr-1's emergence and its contribution to drug resistant infection trends is not yet clear. For now, the case serves mostly to highlight the ongoing crisis of rising antibiotic resistance and furthers the need for better stewardship of old antibiotics and development of new ones.

Found footage of a fascinated detail of rocket booster physics.

Who can name [without peeking] what is happening at the midpoint of this clip?

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Geometry in motion:

https://media.giphy.com/media/26h0pK...FzZS/giphy.gif

Because...

http://66.media.tumblr.com/ab1f27bd2...vux8o1_500.gif

Max Q?

Thumbs up for Science!

Recipient of First Penis Transplant in U.S. Is Released From Hospital

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The man who received the first penis transplant in the United States left a hospital on Wednesday, three and a half weeks after the operation. He is recovering well, with good blood flow to the transplanted organ and no signs of rejection, his doctors said.

“Everything seems to be healing,” said the patient, Thomas Manning, 64, a bank courier from Halifax, Mass. “Everything’s fine. It’s going to get better, too.”

Mr. Manning needed the transplant because his penis was removed in 2012 to treat cancer. The replacement organ, from a deceased donor, was attached during a 15-hour operation on May 8 and 9 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“He’s doing great,” said Dr. Curtis L. Cetrulo, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. “So far, so good. We’re very pleased.”

Dr. Cetrulo and Dr. Dicken Ko, the director of the hospital’s regional urology program, said that the operation had accomplished two main objectives: to restore normal-looking genitals and urinary function.

“He’s standing up and he’s aiming, just like the good old days,” Dr. Ko said.

The doctors said that they were hopeful that sensation and sexual function would also return, but that the process involved nerve regeneration and would occur over months. In hand transplants, Dr. Cetrulo said, sensation “comes back rapidly at a rudimentary level, but we’ve then seen continuing improvement for five years.”

Mr. Manning must take anti-rejection drugs every day for the rest of his life, and he will see doctors twice a week for the next few weeks to check for signs of rejection and adjust medicine doses.

His surgery was experimental, part of a research program with the eventual goal of helping veterans who sustained pelvic injuries in combat, as well as cancer patients and accident victims.

Another patient, burned in a car accident, will receive a transplant as soon as a matching donor becomes available, Dr. Cetrulo said.

Surgeons at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are also planning to perform penis transplants and have had a combat veteran, injured in Afghanistan, on a waiting list for several months.

Polar Bears in Canada Are Pooping Glitter

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The polar bears in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo are so glam rock, they’re literally pooping glitter. CNET reports that, for the last two years, zookeepers at Assiniboine have been feeding their bears different colors of glitter in order to differentiate between each bear’s feces. Zookeepers say the sparkly droppings allow them to track the health and happiness of each polar bear.

CBC News explains that zookeepers use the same regular non-toxic glitter you can find at any art supplies store. They did some research to identify the safest possible glitter for bear consumption and chose a color ranging from a dark purple to a shiny gold for each bear. Currently, eight of the nine polar bears at the zoo regularly consume glitter with meals of ground-up horse meat. Samples are collected from the time bears are first brought to the zoo until they reach sexual maturity.

Zookeepers say you can learn a surprising amount about a bear’s wellbeing from a little bit of sparkly poop. In addition to using the fecal matter to identify current health issues, researchers are performing a longitudinal study on the bears’ ability to acclimate to zoo life. They track stress hormones in fecal samples, observe bear behavior, and then attempt to draw conclusions about both the animals and their own care-taking strategies.

"We want to know, are we doing it right? Are there ways we can improve?" Stephen Petersen of the International Polar Bear Conservation Centre told CBC News. “To really have a science based way of saying, well this really worked for the bears or, this really didn’t.”

Yikes.....

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Vanderbilt biologist Kenneth Catania has accidentally discovered that electric eels make leaping attacks that dramatically increase the strength of the electric shocks they deliver and, in so doing, has confirmed a 200-year-old observation by famous 19th century explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.

Glitter poop? That's how we track animals in the 21st Century?

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King Tut was the first Sword of the Morning. Who knew?

So the dagger wasn't smelted but hammered into shape? That's pretty crazy.

Nobody around here made that dagger. Tut just stole it off a dead alien warrior, moran retarts.

The vehicle is stationary throughout that clip.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Controlling quantum states atom by atom <a href="https://t.co/A98ZFb6hFC">https://t.co/A98ZFb6hFC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/UniBasel">@unibasel</a></p>&mdash; Phys.org (@physorg_com) <a href="https://twitter.com/physorg_com/status/740914172767162370">June 9, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Oh. Then I'm guessing either acoustic change based on thrust output variation or the thrust going from subsonic speed to supersonic.

Yeah, it's a cool concise visual representation of the unpredictability of the sub to supersonic transition. /spoiler unlocked

Metric vs. Imperial

http://i65.tinypic.com/11ihegy.jpg

Neat. I was leaning toward acoustics based on the sound suppression that they employed.

I remember having to convince someone in high school that the "sparklers" didn't actually ignite the SSMEs.

LMAO

They are to burn off any pooled combustible gases pre-ignition to avoid destructive, non-directed combustion at liftoff.

Yes, I know.

But we don't have warp drive or quantum torpedoes yet? Not buying it.

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I took it that they could smelt metal sooner than previously thought

Well first they said Egypt wasn't suspected to have developed the skills to smelt iron that early, then they say the dagger was shaped by hammer, then they say it's evidence of early iron smithing in Egypt.

It's really unclear.

He who smelted it, dealted it.

Smelting, forging and hammerforming are subsets of smithing.

Egyptians did not have the tech to reach temperatures to smelt this ore.

The earth's atmosphere smelted it as the meteorite fell to earth.

Egyptians found it and hammered it into shape.

Ok, so I just don't know shit about smithing.

Pretty incredible that they could create such a good-looking dagger with just a hammer.

While it's possible that it happened this way, that is a shit load of speculation about something that happened thousands of years ago to state it as fact.

As opposed to all the firsthand knowledge we usually call on these days about 1400 BC?

They're presently fairly certain, and apparently have been for a while, that Egyptians of the era had no tech to make the alloy.

What they confirmed, what is new, is the actual composition of the alloy, through spectroscopy.

It's a man formed/shaped tool composed of an alloy that had to come from a meteorite, unless this one tiny object was ejected from the bowels of the earth somehow, or they had smelting technology they only used this one time.

Thx.

Bold prediction: A NASA spacecraft will catch fire in space today..... :D

Fire in the Hole: Studying How Flames Grow in Space

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Understanding how fire spreads in a microgravity environment is critical to the safety of astronauts who live and work in space. And while NASA has conducted studies aboard the space shuttle and International Space Station, risks to the crew have forced these experiments to be limited in size and scope.

Now a new experiment, designed, built and managed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, will ignite an understanding of microgravity fire on a much larger scale. The Spacecraft Fire Experiment, known as Saffire, is a series of experiments to be launched on three different flights beginning in March.

“A spacecraft fire is one of the greatest crew safety concerns for NASA and the international space exploration community,” says Gary Ruff, Saffire project manager.

Saffire will involve far larger flames than previous experiments and will investigate the way fire spreads on a variety of combustible materials. Because the experiments will be conducted away from the space station, there is no risk to the astronauts aboard.

Each Saffire experiment will be remotely operated inside a 3 x 5 foot module, split into two compartments. One side of the module is an avionics bay that contains sensors, high definition video cameras and signal processing equipment. The other side contains the hardware required to ignite a large flame and burn the fabrics and materials inside.

When the experiments begin, Saffire I and III will burn one large 16 by 37-inch piece of SIBAL cloth, which is a blend of fiberglass and cotton. This material has been studied in previous microgravity combustion experiments, although at a much smaller size. The SIBAL cloth will be burned from the bottom to see how the flame spreads. If the flame extinguishes itself, scientists will light it at the top and see what happens as the flame moves opposite to the airflow.

Saffire II, scheduled to launch in June from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, will ignite a mix of nine different samples of materials used routinely on the space station including flame reerunant fabrics used for astronaut clothing, station Plexiglas window samples with edge variations and structures used for storage containers and silicone composites. Each sample is two by 11 inches, the size sample NASA uses to screen materials on Earth before they are used on a spacecraft.

“Saffire seeks to answer two questions,” says David Urban, principal investigator. “Will an upward spreading flame continue to grow or will microgravity limit the size? Secondly, what fabrics and materials will catch fire and how will they burn?”

The Saffire I payload will hitch a ride on a resupply mission to the space station in an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo vehicle from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When Cygnus arrives, astronauts will unload their supplies, but Saffire will remain on board Cygnus.

“Within the first day after Cygnus pulls away from the space station, we will begin the experiment, which will run autonomously once the RUN command is sent,” says Steven Sinacore, deputy project manager. “It will only take a few hours to run the experiments, but Cygnus will remain in space for seven days to ensure complete data transmission back to the Saffire operations team on the ground.” Eventually, Saffire, along with Cygnus, will be destroyed upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Concepts for additional Saffire missions- IV, V, VI are in development to focus more on flame spread, smoke propagation, detection and suppression of fire.

As NASA continues to send astronauts to the space station and continues the path toward a human mission to Mars, improving understanding of the structure of spacecraft fires is critical. “Saffire is all about gaining a better understanding of how fire behaves in space so NASA can develop better materials, technologies and procedures to reduce crew risk and increase space flight safety,” says Ruff.

Saffire’s flight systems were sponsored by NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program. AES develops foundational technologies and high-priority capabilities that are the building blocks for future human space missions. AES technologies are developed using in-house capabilities and NASA’s workforce while fostering public-private partnerships.

Don't know if this is so much cutting edge science as comprehensive engineering.

But I could watch it all day long

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Note this is available in up to 4K.

And here it appears to be on google maps

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/...!4d129.8349381

/r/interestingas****

I'd like to see one of the building of the Death Star

Meanwhile in Mississippi

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Science humor

I've always wondered how much time I (and my offspring) would have to spend in the ocean to grow a pair of gills

My brothers and I have been here for thousands of generations and we don't have them yet. Shoot for bigger lungs and a blow hole.

Not that kind of blowhole, you pervert.

Three "times"...

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leojhgZEfT1qb3ioq.gif

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Hints of new particle rumored to fade, but data analysis continues


Particle physics fans are just going to have to wait.
Rumors swirling on the internet are casting doubt on hints of a new particle reported by scientists at the particle physics laboratory CERN in Geneva. But researchers say it’s still too soon to know whether the particle exists or not.


“Currently the data are still being recorded and analyzed and it is too early to conclude,” says Beate Heinemann of the University of California, Berkeley. “We hope to be able to present the new data in early August.” Heinemann is the deputy spokesperson of ATLAS, an experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. ATLAS scientists, along with those from a second LHC experiment, CMS, reported signs of the new particle in December (SN: 1/9/16, p. 7).


Physicists have rumored on Twitter and on blogs that evidence of the particle is disappearing with additional data — an outcome that would disappoint hordes of eager scientists.


After CMS and ATLAS researchers reported an unexpected bump in their data, physicists went into a frenzy (SN: 5/28/16, p. 11), posting hundreds of papers about the result online at arXiv.org.


But with the data they had in hand, physicists couldn’t tell if the signal was real, or just a random fluctuation that would vanish as quickly as it had appeared. Since May, the LHC has been colliding protons at a fever pitch (SN Online: 5/9/16).






https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...ysis-continues

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured images of Jupiter's auroras on the poles of the gas giant. The observations were supported by measurements taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft. Juno will begin orbiting Jupiter on July 4.

Pretty cool, looking forward to what they discover when it starts to orbit

Its twice as big as all the other planets in our solar system combined... mind boggling, wheres Keir Dullea when you need him?

I see there wool be a "live stream" available. I will definitely watch if I don't forget.

Oh my, God does provide some spectacular views for us all to see.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Astronomers find evidence of water clouds in first <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/spectrum?src=hash">#spectrum</a> of coldest brown dwarf <a href="https://t.co/NXMePwiVTo">https://t.co/NXMePwiVTo</a></p>&mdash; Phys.org (@physorg_com) <a href="https://twitter.com/physorg_com/status/750774235375800320">July 6, 2016</a></blockquote>
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So... Juno. Have you guys heard about this? I've been too busy to post about it, but man, the Juno project has been really exciting.

Here's the rundown:

Nasa sent a badass advanced probe named Juno, to survey Jupiter in ways we've never been able to before. There were some very advanced methods used that almost eclipse the awesomeness of the Mars landing.

First, take a moment to appreciate the humor in naming the probe "Juno." The God Jupiter had many mistresses, and many of Jupiter's moons are named after his mistresses. Jupiter was always trying to hide that fact. Juno was Jupiters wife, who constantly suspected him of cheating. So NASA sent basically sent Jupiter's wife to check up on him and his mistresses.

Anyway.. so NASA launched Juno back on August 5th, 2011. Here's the actual path Juno has taken in the 5 years since, taking advantage of both Earth's gravity for slingshotting off into space, and Jupiter's close pass to Earth this year:

http://i.imgur.com/EHTN00d.gif

Here's an actual photo taken on Juno's approach, showing Jupiter and several moons:

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NASA's Juno spacecraft obtained this color view at a distance of 6.8 million miles (10.9 million kilometers) from Jupiter, on June 21, 2016.

Here's the rundown of how it happened. The approach was very difficult to plan for:

And they ****in nailed it. Again.

Much more info on Juno: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

More Juno awesomeness...

Juno switched to autopilot mode for Jupiter final approach

Four days out from arriving at the solar system’s biggest planet, NASA’s Juno spacecraft received a final uplink of commands Thursday governing the robotic probe’s high-velocity braking maneuver Monday to steer into orbit around Jupiter.

Juno will run on autopilot for the rest of its approach, counting down to a series of tightly-choreographed maneuvers Monday leading to ignition of the craft’s main engine to slow its speed by 1,212 mph (541.7 meters per second), just enough to be captured in orbit by the firm grasp of Jupiter’s gravity.

Before uploading the final command sequence, ground controllers stationed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at a control center run by Lockheed Martin, the spacecraft’s builder and operator, prepared the engine for Monday’s critical burn.

“Ten days ago, we opened the main engine cover so that the engine would be ready to fire when we get to July 4, and a couple of days ago we pressurized the whole system, so that the engine is ready to go, (and) all the propulsion, all the pipes and valves are all ready to fire,” said Ed Hirst, Juno mission manager at JPL.

Engineers transmitted the final command file, dubbed “ji4040,” to Juno around 3:15 p.m. EDT (1915 GMT) Thursday via an antenna in NASA’s Deep Space Network located in Goldstone, California.

“Once those commands are sent, it will be hands-off from the team here on the ground,” Hirst told reporters Thursday before sending the order for Juno to launch its Jupiter arrival sequence. “We’ll continue to monitor the spacecraft and make sure everything is executing as we expect it to execute, but the spacecraft is on its own, and it’s designed to take care of itself with all the command sequences that we’ve sent it.”

[...]

Radio tones broadcast by Juno will be picked up by an array of huge dish antennas on the ground. Each tone comes in at a slightly different frequency, indicating when Juno accomplishes one of the many steps during the arrival sequence.

Juno’s high-gain antenna will not be pointed toward Earth during the insertion burn, eliminating any chance engineers will receive detailed telemetry on the progress of the engine firing.

Instead, controllers will listen for tones at the start and end of the burn, and watch for a subtle fluctuation in the radio signal coming from Juno caused by the Doppler shift, a variation in the frequency of the spacecraft’s transmission as its velocity changes.

The Doppler effect is similar to the change in pitch of an emergency siren as an ambulance passes.

Heading for a point 2,900 miles (4,667 kilometers) above Jupiter, Juno will configure itself for the make-or-break engine firing beginning shortly after 9 p.m. EDT Monday (0100 GMT Tuesday), when the spacecraft will begin turning to face the right direction for the burn.

The pointing maneuver will turn Juno’s three huge solar array wings, each stretching nearly 30 feet (9 meters) long, away from the sun, forcing the probe to drain power from its batteries. Juno is the first spacecraft to travel to Jupiter’s distance, where the sun is 25 times dimmer than it is at Earth, and rely solely on solar power.

Built with lean power requirements in mind, the power-efficient space probe can run all its systems and scientific instruments on enough juice to power five 100-watt light bulbs.

About 22 minutes before ignition, Juno’s smaller pointing thrusters will increase the craft’s spin rate from 2 rpm to 5 rpm for added stability during the main engine burn.

At the time of Juno’s engine firing, Jupiter’s gravity will exert a tight tug on the spacecraft, accelerating it to approximately 150,000 mph (about 250,000 kilometers per hour), making Juno one of the fastest human-made objects in history.

Soon after the insertion maneuver is complete, Juno will spin down back to its standard two revolutions per minute, then turn back toward the sun to start recharging its batteries and beam telemetry to engineers on Earth.

Juno’s Leros 1b engine, supplied by Moog-ISP in the United Kingdom, needs to fire for at least 20 minutes for the probe to reach a safe orbit around Jupiter, according to Rick Nybakken, the mission’s project manager at JPL.

Otherwise, Jupiter’s gravity will bend Juno’s trajectory and send it speeding back into interplanetary space, missing the planet entirely.

Software programmers installed safeguards to raise the probability of a good insertion burn, including an “auto restart” feature to allow the engine to quickly resume the burn if a computer fault or another anomaly interrupts it.

Monday’s engine burn, assuming it operates for all 35 minutes, will place Juno in an elongated orbit that takes the spacecraft around Jupiter’s poles once every 53-and-a-half days. A follow-up engine burn is scheduled for Oct. 19 to lower the high end of Juno’s orbit, placing the robot on a course around the planet that takes it as close as 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) over Jupiter’s cloud tops every two weeks.

During each close flyby of Jupiter, the body-mounted instruments aboard Juno will take turns looking at the planet’s clouds, measuring plasma, and quantifying the giant world’s gravitational and magnetic fields as the orbiter spins on its axis once every 30 seconds.

[...]

Juno is going into the most extreme environment ever visited by a spacecraft. An intense magnetic field and deadly radiation await Juno, hazards that threaten to fry the probe’s sensitive electronics. Engineers crammed Juno’s most critical computer gear inside a titanium vault to shield against the worst of Jupiter, but there are still risks.

NASA says Juno will be exposed to 20 million rads during its time at Jupiter, equivalent to more than 100 million dental X-rays. Officials say the radiation will likely strain Juno’s health, limiting it to a lifetime of about 20 months from the time the craft gets to Jupiter.

The magnetic field at Juno’s position is an order of magnitude stronger than any space vehicle has ever experienced.

“This spacecraft is going to fly in space through a magnetic field that is 10 times greater than anything we’ve ever experienced,” said Jack Connerney, Juno’s deputy principal investigator and head of the mission’s magnetometer investigation. “That is one of the curiosities. We’re going to have to see how it performs when we do that.”

Yeah, I saw that trajectory thing. Those guys are better at math than I am.

Thanks for posting the pics. I hadn't seen that.

It's amazing how we communicate with Juno. The amount of planning and prep it has to take is astounding.

Look how far we've come in a few hundred years.

Shit, look at the last 20 years. Imagine what we might be doing in 2-300 more years.

This is amazing shit.

Researchers storing information securely in DNA


Experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider generate 15 million gigabytes of data per year. That is a lot of digital data to inscribe on hard drives or beam up to the "cloud."

<section class="article-banner first-banner"> George Bachand, a Sandia National Laboratories bioengineer at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, is exploring a better, more permanent method for encrypting and storing sensitive data: DNA. Compared to digital and analog information storage, DNA is more compact and durable and never becomes obsolete. Readable DNA was extracted from the 600,000-year-old remains of a horse found in the Yukon.

</section> Tape- and disk-based data storage degrades and can become obsolete, requiring rewriting every decade or so. Cloud- or server-based storage requires a vast amount of electricity; in 2011 Google's server farms used enough electricity to power 200,000 U.S. homes. Furthermore, old-school methods require lots and lots of space. IBM estimated 1,000 gigabytes of information in book form would take up seven miles of bookshelves. In fact, Sandia recently completed a 15,000-square-foot building to store 35,000 boxes of inactive records and archival documents.

"Historically, the national laboratories and the U.S. government have a lot of highly secure information that they need to store long-term. I see this as a potentially robust way of storing classified information in the future to preserve it for multiple generations," said Bachand. "The key is how do you go from text to DNA and do that in a way that is safe and secure."

Bachand was inspired by the recording of all of Shakespeare's sonnets into 2.5 million base pairs of DNA—about half the genome of the tiny E. coli bacterium. Using this method, the group at the European Bioinformatics Institute could theoretically store 2.2 petabytes of information—200 times the printed material in the Library of Congress—in one gram of DNA.
Marlene Bachand, a biological engineer at Sandia and George Bachand's spouse, added, "We are taking advantage of a biological component, DNA, and using its unique ability to encode huge amounts of data in an extremely small volume to develop DNA constructs that can be used to transmit and store vast amounts of encrypted data for security purposes."


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-dna.html#jCp

Would have been better with a dick-shaped beaker.

All thanks to supercoiling. However, I wonder how this would fare if exposed to even moderate heat, which causes DNA strands to denature.

Science!

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MxikFRQ4iKQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

'Ghostbusters' Star Kate McKinnon Is Obsessed With Physics

I interviewed both MIT physicists who worked on the film, and they were excited to geek out on it. Was it interesting to work on a set that had this much scientific thought put into it?

Yeah, it was great. Just the notion of playing a scientist was why I wanted to do the movie in the first place. I think I probably geeked out with one of the scientists. I have been a big astrophysics and quantum mechanics fan for a long time, and this dealt very much with the possibility of quantum mechanics.

The rest here:
http://www.popsci.com/kate-mckinnon-...physics#page-2

Some guy in China with no college education comes up with a new way to verify Carmichael numbers.


<cite class="el-editorial-source">Beijing (CNN)</cite>A Chinesemigrant worker with no college degree has found a solution to a complex math problem -- in what appears to be a real life version of the Oscar-winning movie "Good Will Hunting."Yu Jianchun, who works for a parcel delivery company, said he'd always had a passion for numbers and has created an alternative method to verify Carmichael numbers.


His solution amazed academics, who said his proof was much more efficient than the traditional one.


"It was a very imaginative solution," said Cai Tianxin, a math professor at Zhejiang University.


"He has never received any systematic training in number theory nor taken advanced math classes. All he has is an instinct and an extreme sensitivity to numbers."


Carmichael numbers are sometimes described as "pseudo primes" -- they complicate the task of determining true prime numbers, which are dividable only by 1 and itself. They play an important role in computer science and information security.


Yu worked on his proof during his free time while building a new home in his village last year.


The rest here:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/asia/c...inkId=26655547

A.I. DOWNS EXPERT HUMAN FIGHTER PILOT IN DOGFIGHT SIMULATION

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/9a/9a32b...6af038d7d3.jpg

In the military world, fighter pilots have long been described as the best of the best. As Tom Wolfe famously wrote, only those with the "right stuff" can handle the job. Now, it seems, the right stuff may no longer be the sole purview of human pilots.

A pilot A.I. developed by a doctoral graduate from the University of Cincinnati has shown that it can not only beat other A.I.s, but also a professional fighter pilot with decades of experience. In a series of flight combat simulations, the A.I. successfully evaded retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene "Geno" Lee, and shot him down every time. In a statement, Lee called it "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible A.I. I've seen to date."

And "Geno" is no slouch. He's a former Air Force Battle Manager and adversary tactics instructor. He's controlled or flown in thousands of air-to-air intercepts as mission commander or pilot. In short, the guy knows what he's doing. Plus he's been fighting A.I. opponents in flight simulators for decades.

But he says this one is different. "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed."

The A.I., dubbed ALPHA, was developed by Psibernetix, a company founded by University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory. According to the developers, ALPHA was specifically designed for research purposes in simulated air-combat missions.

The secret to ALPHA's superhuman flying skills is a decision-making system called a genetic fuzzy tree, a subtype of fuzzy logic algorithms. The system approaches complex problems much like a human would, says Ernest, breaking the larger task into smaller subtasks, which include high-level tactics, firing, evasion, and defensiveness. By considering only the most relevant variables, it can make complex decisions with extreme speed. As a result, the A.I. can calculate the best maneuvers in a complex, dynamic environment, over 250 times faster than its human opponent can blink.

After hour-long combat missions against ALPHA, Lee says,"I go home feeling washed out. I'm tired, drained and mentally exhausted. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge."

The results of the dogfight simulations are published in the Journal of Defense Management.

Speaking of robots.......

This is the Curiosity Mars rover taking a pic at Earth...

http://i64.tinypic.com/sqt553.jpg

Jupiter's immense gravity actually saves Earth from many asteroid strikes. Thanks Jupiter!

http://i.imgur.com/oB90B4P.gif

Now that's an awesome headline...

Drones that shoot vaccine-laden M&Ms will be used to save endangered ferrets

U.S. wildlife officials have a problem: How to save the endangered black-footed ferret from a plague.

So they’ve come up with a sweet plan. They’re going to shoot vaccine-smothered M&Ms over 1,200 acres in Montana from drones, according to The Guardian.

One wildlife biologist called the contraption a “glorified gumball machine.”

To get to the ferrets, the drones will fly over the prairie dog population at the UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Montana, The Guardian reports.

Black-footed ferrets, North America’s only native ferret, depend on prairie dogs for their survival, eating them and invading their burrows for shelter.

Once thought to be extinct worldwide, these ferrets have been making a comeback over the last 30 years thanks to efforts from state and federal agencies, zoos, conservation groups and private landowners, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Nearly 300 are said to remain in a handful of sites across North America.

But both the black-footed ferret and prairie dogs are endangered by a current epidemic of the sylvatic plague, a flea-borne disease.

In an environmental assessment earlier this year the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service called the plague “a significant impediment to ferret recovery because of its lethality to ferrets, and because it can eliminate prairie dogs on which ferrets are dependent for both habitat, and as prey.”

Wildlife officials have been stumped on how to protect prairie dogs spread over large acres of land.

“We dropped the vaccine out of a bag while walking around, but that’s very hard to do over thousands of acres,” Randy Machett, a USFW biologist told the Guardian.

“Spraying burrows with insecticide to kill the fleas is also labor intensive and not a long-term solution. So we are working with private contractors to develop equipment to drop the vaccine uniformly across an area, rather than one hog getting to eat a big pile of them.”

Machett said a “glorified gumball machine” has been created to fit into a drone and spray M&Ms smeared with vaccine-laden peanut butter.

“It is the fastest, cheapest way to distribute the vaccine,” he told the Guardian. “We are hopeful this oral vaccine will be used to mitigate plague sites and treat tens of thousands of acres each year.”

The plan still has to survive a public comment period; farmers who consider both animals a pest are not fans of the drone plan, according to Wired.

“Local farmers are perfectly happy to see both species dead as doornails and don’t want to find peanut-smeared chocolate in their meadows,” notes Uproxx.

“But until they work out a way to get ferrets and prairie dogs onto a health plan, the candy-hosing drone will have to do.”

Machett told the Guardian that wildlife officials hope to have the drones in the air by Sept. 1. If the plan works in Montana similar efforts are expected in Arizona and Colorado.